


Birds, Bees, and Witches

by blueteak



Category: Practical Magic (1998)
Genre: Gen, POV Multiple, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21836473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/pseuds/blueteak
Summary: Gillian and her aunts have a talk on the day she runs away from home.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Birds, Bees, and Witches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tris_chandler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tris_chandler/gifts).



Gillian cast the "Soft Footsteps" spell over and over again (just to be safe) on her way back into the house at 5:00 a.m. only to have her casting rendered irrelevant by the sight of her aunts waiting for her, midnight margarita time having apparently extended into the morning hours. 

“Just to be clear, Gillian, when Frances and I said to watch out for boys who could charm the pants off of you, we didn’t mean that they could actually use charms to take your pants off of you. Well. Not magic charms, anyway. You’re not under any magical compulsion, just in case you were worried.” 

Gillian straightened up and gave her aunts a look that would have frozen the Puritans in their tracks, suddenly looking every inch the mature, formidable witch. 

“I know, Jet!” She exclaimed, suddenly morphing into a surly 18 year old again.

“Then you also know that hopping up and down chanting ‘I hope I don’t get pregnant, I hope I don’t get pregnant” doesn’t usually work, right?” Jet asked, sounding right on the edge of sarcastic but clearly genuinely concerned (there were contraceptive spells, but it was best not to rely on them since the heat of the moment could easily interfere with casting).

“Of course! Frances gave me my first box of condoms. And shoved her fist in one of them to show Sally and me just how much they could hold in case any guy tries to claim that he’s too big to fit in one. Actually…I don’t know how I ever had sex after that.”

“Oh dear, I do hope that’s not why Sally hasn’t seemed interested,” Frances said sotto voce. But Gillian didn’t even need to cast to have sensitive ears where anything about her sister was concerned.

“No,” Gillian said, once again looking powerful and wise beyond her years, as all Owens women could approximately one second after birth. While no one was sure whether Owens women’s magic manifested in utero (it had been a hotly debated topic for centuries), all agreed that their magic worked immediately post-birth. The amount of Owens infants who had saved themselves from incompetent midwives and doctors was legendary. Frances, who had been planning to illustrate an alphabet/chronicle of everything that Owens women and children had saved themselves from over the years, had been irked the first time she saw The Gashlycrumb Tinies--that is until she realized that Gorey's endings were different. Her alphabet went more like “A is for baby Alice, who survived asphyxia, and also for Agatha, who survived attempted axe murder" (the townspeople had gotten slightly more creative after discovering hanging didn’t work). 

“It’s not because of Frances's fist in a condom. It's because of my mother and father, and Frances and Ethan, and--” Gillian continued. 

And Frances realized that if she wanted to break all their hearts she could write a book in the style of The Gashlycrumb Tinies about all the men the Owens women had loved and lost early. E is for Ethan who died by fate, not by accident.

“I know,” Frances interjected, interrupting Gillian’s list. “Gilly-bean,” she said, falling back into using a nickname that she knew Gillian professed to hate but secretly loved (just as she understood that even the coolest, condom-dispensing, chocolate cake for breakfast-providing aunts must be irritating to their charges in some ways) “you and Sally are two sides of the same coin, pushing love away in different ways, but pushing it away all the same. I know we've been over this again and again, but I hope soon you'll understand that we may never have what's considered normal, but we can have happy. We can have love even if it isn’t forever. And love isn’t really forever even for the magic-less people who yell “Witch, witch, you’re a witch” at us, as I’m sure you know from the potion requests we get.”  


Gillian looked like she was somewhere between sighing and crying and also right on the edge of saying something hurtful that she meant and yet also didn’t mean. If Frances knew Gillian and could predict the future (which she could a fair amount of the time), she knew that Gillian would hold herself back.

And hold herself back she did, after looking back and forth between Jet and Frances and then taking in the kitchen’s familiar herbs and high ceilings before fixing her gaze out toward the lawn, the lawn where they’d had light shows that would have made the towns’s children both jealous and terrified. 

Frances held back her own sigh. She couldn’t blame Gillian for feeling this mix of appreciation for how she and Jet lived while at the same time wanting something different. What person, Owens woman or no, wouldn’t at least test fate even if they didn't feel up to fighting it? Frances knew that Gillian understood deep down that happiness was possible without finding a one true love and living with that person forever. Gillian just didn’t yet know whether or how it would be possible for her. Nor, Frances understood, did she want to be responsible for killing her own true love. Would her Harry die of a hangnail? Her Jeremy die of jaundice? Frances could well understand why Gillian didn’t want to tempt fate that way but also understood why she wasn’t ready to buy her own huge Victorian home and move right in with Sally (though of course Frances and Jet had heard Gillian and Sally talking and knew that they anticipated being in the same boat as Jet and herself).

“I know,” Gillian finally said, voice trembling. “I know that what we have here is good, and also that I'm using these guys to avoid killing someone I might love. I just need to…”

“Blow this popsicle stand?” Jet asked.

“I know we’ve eaten a lot of popsicles, Jet, but enough to build this house?” Frances teased.

“When we put the cake down, yes,” Jet replied.

Frances looked dubious.

Gillian found herself pulled into the debate, seemingly despite herself. “Maybe our Owens ancestors conjured up some early popsicles back in the day and we’ve been living in two hundred years of popsicle sticks?”

“Well, if our ancestors did build this house from something food related I’d have preferred gingerbread over popsicles. Seems more appropriate, right?” Frances asked.

“Except we’re Gillian and Sally, not Hansel and Gretel,” Gillian laughed.

“And is that the only difference?” Jet asked, smiling.

Gillian looked confused. 

“Let me see if I can help,” said Frances, clearing her throat. “Now, how does this go? I had it a minute ago. Oh yes, I remember. ‘Witch! Witch! You’re a witch.’ Did I get that right?” She asked Jet.

Jet cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know…you forgot to throw something at her.”

Frances smacked her forehead. “Right.” She threw a small bag to Gillian, who caught it deftly and opened it, starting to rummage inside.

“Hmmm,” she said, feeling around without looking.“No condoms? No cash? Not even…any herbs?” 

Gillian pulled a large, iron object out of the bag. “It’s a key,” she said somewhat blankly.

“Yes,” Frances said. “So you know that this is always home no matter how far away you get with your beau tonight.”

“Of course you knew,” Gillian muttered.

“Yes dear,” Jet said. “But go ahead and sneak out tonight with Jack anyway like you planned. I’m sure he doesn’t need to see our goodbyes.”

“No,” said Gillian, near tears again. “He probably doesn’t.” 

“And you’d better write,” Frances said. “That is one way that Jet and I would like you to be like a normal teen leaving home. They even tried to get me to buy you a stationary set at the corner store in town when I said you were leaving. I told them that you didn't need stationary and could just use crow’s feathers and blood and the skin of people who don’t pay for their potions to write to us.”

“They stopped offering farewell gift suggestions after that,” Jet chimed in.

“They’re going to chase me out of town with pitchforks now. Thank you," Gillian said, clearly trying not to sound too overwhelmed.

“No, no pitchforks. Though you and Jack should get off at exit 15 rather 30. His gas gauge is a bit off,” Frances informed her, sounding a bit teary herself.

Gillian shook her head, smiling despite herself. 

“Goodnight,” Gillian said. “I’ll write.” 

“We know,” Frances and Jet said together. 

Gillian slept through the day until dinner time, deciding not to tell Sally that their aunts knew she was running away. It would make her too emotional before she took off. Gillian also didn’t say anything when she tasted the herbs for protection and luck and love woven into her meal that night, but knew that her aunts knew she was grateful anyway, just as she knew they would be okay without her for a while. After all, she was a witch.


End file.
